HISTORIC 1909 FREIGHT TRAIN CAR, WRECKAGE DISCOVERED ON SHASTA LAKE

[Laughter] [Music] welcome to california unearthed i am with jeremy tuggle from the shasta historical society and dave young kite with the see if i can get this correct shasta cascade railroad preservation society correct rail preservation real ah of course i messed it up we're at tunnel number six right behind us and we are here at a historic moment a gentleman by the name of ryan rizzle hammond with mariah stevens and james white discovered a 1909 derailed freight car and we're gonna go check it out but the one thing about this is the lake is 177 feet below the crest of shasta dam is the second lowest it has ever been the lowest was 1976 1977 when it was 230 feet below the crest of the dam it looks like a moonscape out here it is desolate but we will be next to the sacramento river so let's go check out this rail car all right this is rail tunnel number six this all should be underwater right now and i know that it has collapsed in the middle of that tunnel so we cannot walk through it i could probably try but i'm not going to but this is what it looks like out here this all should be under water this is what the inside of the tunnel looks like at the collapse and this is looking out to where we're just standing these were in 2014 we're now at the north end of tunnel number six not very far from where we were just at with the building of shasta dam between 1938 and 1945 came the flood waters of shasta lake which engulfed a 1883 rail line a 1917 highway which was highway 99 also known as pacific highway multiple towns many acres of native land and 26 cemeteries the 26 cemeteries contained native and non-native remains that were placed in a special cemetery in central valley in 1942 the cemetery was established for the pure purpose of somewhere to place these remains to save them from the flood waters but today we're going to talk about railroad history in 1872 the central pacific railroad made reading the northern terminus it wasn't until 1883 another 10 years later before the railroad continued north to oregon they were trying to decide whether they want to go through shasta and then north or go up the sacramento river valley if you look at this map from 1939 you will see that the railroad goes up the sacramento river valley so if you're walking the south end of the river trail from the diesel horse bridge in redding you will be walking along the old rail line 1939 a new highway 99 and new railroad grade were established to make up for the lost railroad and highway that is now under the lake this is a sacramento river that you see here and we'll be walking between the sacramento river and the old 1883 rail line so now we are just south of tunnel number six this is railroad tunnel in revo trestle number five still in lake head and if you notice the two white concrete pillars begin to come out of the water there on the left-hand side when the water level level's a little higher people like to kayak through here but now that it's this low a lot of people are taking photographs on the railroad trestle itself i think that'd be kind of cool i'm not going to do it today that would involve having to swim across there but maybe next time so this is more in my wheelhouse right here this is highway 99 old highway 99 which should be underwater half of the bridge was removed in the 1990s the marina cut it off who knows what happened to it but it's the pollock bridge built in 1916. traffic was on in 1917 this is the cutting grade here so the picture that you see on my youtube channel i took here in 2014 on the bridge with my daughter standing on top of this one but this is old route 99 this should be underwater right now historic highway 99 was also known as the pacific highway yes that's awesome this is what gets me as a historian going is seeing stuff like this and the idea that people traveled this road at one point in time i think that's just the coolest thought and the coolest idea these are three photographs i took in 2014 of the pawlik bridge on the left that's where i took the video up on that ledge so jeremy has found a foundation to a building just out there by that far wet spot to the left definitely go check out his youtube channel for more information on this and then the town of pollock is just south of here and he believes he knows what building it is all right so jeremy you where where'd you bring me here okay so we are actually on the shasta route which was part of the california oregon railroad division of the central pacific railroad uh later acquired by southern pacific and so part of the railroad is coming out of the water here this is lake shasta sacramento river arm uh this is heading north up towards tunnel number six and so this is the railroad coming out and there's actually ties and a base of a concrete semaphore structure with its electrical wiring still sticking out of the water down here now a lot of this has shifted due to the high water levels and so it's been washed out in portions but this is the intact portion that you'll see on my youtube channel uh that i'm watching this with my friend gabriel lee shout out to gabriel and uh anyway this has not been seen in a very long time so when i've posted that video up on it you can read the comments yourselves but uh and those uh on my facebook social media sites where people said i probably found something that a lot of people have not walked or seen in years they're absolutely right and that's that's a good point that you make if you follow jeremy here on youtube jeremy has been out here quite a lot and he has done a lot of work out here and a lot of videos and he's found a lot of things out here he's really been exploring out here um i cannot do this justice definitely go to jeremy's youtube channel it's jeremy tuggle correct right and watch all the videos that he's done out here is absolutely amazing what he has accomplished it's named after my blog spot uh although my youtube channel channel is just jeremy tuggle but i call my show uh exploring shasta county history by jeremy m tuggle because it's named after my blog spot which a lot of these videos are posted to so i just adapted that name for my youtube show right on thank you jeremy all right without further ado let's get on to checking out the wreckage of the 1909 freight car first of all this is the 1939 railroad bridge just past tunnel number six and the freight car wreckage is behind me not very far from tunnel number six here it is 1909 derailed freight car so jeremy where exactly is the tracks or where were the tracks the tracks are up here you can see the rail bed up here but when the lake is full there's enough current to wash everything down and so over the years it has shifted and pushed downstream into the channel and so that's pretty much what got here so a lot of it's been pushed down into this but this was part of a 1909 wreckage uh they were never able to determine of how the wreckage actually transpired so uh anyway they came out there was a record sent in from dunsmere heading south down to this point and that record pretty much cleared the track and they pretty much recreated the bed after the accident happened and just kind of pushed everything inside as well but over the years water flow the increase of water rising and the current of the sacramento river just kind of pushed everything downhill and shifted and that's how it's ended up here and part of these rocks are part of that original wreckage that was either shifted after the accident or from the record itself it was kind of uh kind of funny how they just left everything isn't it this is uh one of five cars there are five cars original report said that there are four cars that have shifted into the sacramento grove channel and uh later on reports later claimed that there were five cars that shifted in there was also a report of a uh hobo nowadays known as a transit riding the brake beam of the train itself and that person actually walked away without injury is that because before the accident it could have been just as it was breaking he was breaking the train and it just locked up as soon as the wheel air holes broke it just stayed put and then of course going through a mess like this it could have been because this is not a brake rod were just told that the brakes were set on this or he this gentleman could tell that the brakes were set remarkable we're finding stuff like this uncharted in 2021 that's gonna be a lot of digging to try to get this out of here we have quite a few people out here today checking this out this is incredible in 2021 that we can still find treasures like this uncharted treasures yes uncharted treasures for sure and once again it's not my discovery this is ryan rizzle hammond's discovery yep data you see okay so what's the brake beam that the hobo ring rode on it wasn't the brake beam that the whole pole ran on sat on [Laughter] yeah it worked that'd be remarkable yeah is that actually upside down or is that right side up it's upside down yeah there's no way that a hugo would be right right there right after all your brakes this this period is on the bottom i guess the strange casting on that side truck never seen anything like it this piece here it's the other wheel right there right here too was made how old would you say this uh real car date right now i'm not certain it can't go it could be late 1800s early 19. wow i would imagine with it being a 1909 freight train yeah march 27th 1909. did you find out what locomotive did you say uh the engine number was 221. okay the one that i found was 242 i'll get ran from red block to description now ryan he was online uh on ebay and he found actual photos of a locomotive with the numbers 221 on it on the boilerplate yeah it's on the rails under the shadows okay all right and then there they do also talk about i think we've won this wreck a little bit that's a lot of weight right there that was built in 1914 oh wow and the wheels are different than this because they changed it because they retired in 83 1983 and they put a standard 1940s for the way it's landed on its back because the car is turned upside down right so it's the way it's sitting now let me say the way it's sitting now would you say the other wheel is still intact the lane flat underneath if two wheels that one might go in that way and then that one that laura's right foot's on and they kind of follow out a yeah perpendicular to the way you figure out where it is so it's probably under this big coupler right here if you were to take the tape and measure it from this wheel to that wheel and you could do the same here okay and in your opinion with the cargo and what's calling still be underneath it's okay it's a possibility if it was railroad ties they may have just left it it could have been their hands they might left it too because i would say there was five cars left and they were back into service in a few hours so they didn't do a thing here so you could have five cars just fighting when the car is derailed a lot of times they'll have jack knife one against the other and they'll power up even today's questions okay and do you think there's any more in this area from here to there that could be because i don't think this would have traveled that far because this is wow that's probably the original ground on eighth grade and once you get a car rolling you're easy to get right and again you're still mind-blown by this discovery being here what really interests me is just the casters and stuff uh because you're being filmed on camera right now can you kind of just go through revise to us uh what some of the parts here on this car and what it is that we're looking at okay basically this is the bottom of the bolster of the bigfoot where the wheels pivot on your car in the center which would have a kingpin holder in place and that's all just pinned when i stick around and a lot of times they just some were pinned somewhere i mean they're derailed to train this wheel make your flying something like that like this of course you got your wheels your axles your bearing housing which has what's called a plain bearing it's made of bones sits on the top of the axle and on the bottom inside which is still here inside right here but it was um together and they use that to clear up into the four d's and stuff and they said change to bearings roll over and uh it's still in there and then this is your wheel here here's your wheel this is your brake assembly this is your brake rigging here and this is your brake rod here wow which is identical on this side it's at the opposite direction some of them i don't think this one did not tell me for sure usually had chains hanging down from the car frame this main outside sill and hooked onto the truck so if it did try to pop off the rail and jackknife the wheel wouldn't be spinning around it would just go so far and then that's it they wouldn't lose it a lot of old locomotive tenders were that way and how big do you think this car is how big were the freight cars back then the freight cars were a little over eight uh eight to nine feet wide and roughly about anywhere from 24 to 30 feet long but uh back then this could have had a lincoln pin what's called lincoln pin coupler but they were switching in the late eight or 1880s to a walking coupler like we have today manufacturers that gives a listing who made them that elf piece shape that's right there with rock on it this one yeah and what is uh what that's a good question oh you can see here of course i can see your brake shoes these here shoes are only held with a pin wow on the other side there's a actually just a strap about that wide it's got an l shape that goes down and usually comes out yeah oh there it is right here wow look at it just a flat bar and it's still in use today the same method because you just pull that out the shoe assembly comes out you slap another one in you drop the pen and you're ready to go again wow that's amazing that's still that wasn't knocked out like minecraft industry if it works don't mess with it all right wow and so anything else that looks like the same over here all right let me see here two uh bolts coming through here and it's not it actually looks like it drilled it could be in the cast in the bolt part which could have been a bracket to help support the brake run one of the brackets right there okay this is all fascinating i appreciate you going over each of the cars functions with us and pieces of the car look here it's been twisted oh yeah rod on the inside of it okay you're right it was twisted the accident dave your knowledge is incredible thank you so much i'm gonna talk airplanes too many years in the air force and four and a half that was restoring warburgs you know vinnie airplane uh locations then sunk down to the lake here we could go find it well they wanted me to take a lead to the edges from here so dave at the shasta cascade rail preservation society was just telling us that there may be more than one car here there may be some others buried out here since there was five cars that derailed in 1909 so there may be other ones out here so the light's changing it's getting later into the day and he came back and he noticed something new and that's what he's kind of scraping around the edges to look at and he's soon going to tell us what this is oh i see the layering yeah march marshall marshall oh w and somebody excuse me marshall oh w and something wow i want a shot of that good eye dave here's a railroad tie just off of the wreckage right here so we're not very far from there may be another part of another car looks like a pipe of some sort but there'd be no reason why they'd have piping out here so i'm assuming along with jeremy and dave that this may be another part to another car possibly and that's just up the hill from the wreckage either that or it's a piece off of that car you'd say that could be the other car okay what do we have here this is the old telegraph hole you had your uh usually they had a man that qualified a morse code he climbed up this phone clip into the wires and just started changing the signal the trains broke down or whatever as they went on as you know the old concrete phone goes is what they switched it and those had crackling okay oh wow how cool then they put the old and so this was the utility pool system going up on the shasta route and what it was used for was to send telegrams or telegraphs to the next depot or stage stop and so if you had something say like a boulder blocking your way on a part of a track you'd be able to send telegram to the next station say hey we need a record completed this out that's how they would do now or even a train wreck a train wreck like this one that we're standing on and it is a straight line like dave was saying because robert if you film up going uh uh south south yep okay there's a wreckage right there there's a car you see that right here could be a secondary car freight car right here a third one is further up north where uh my family's at up there and you see carson and leah and my friend danny up there now didn't you say you found some uh some cable right around here i did and that's gonna be the cable that's sticking out i'll show that today we'll give this on camera a little bit later on but that'll be to the south of us oh okay all right this is a telegraph wire from the poles that we just saw look at that and then here's another tie there's another railroad tie that another one from the one we saw earlier [Music] with two numbers on it round all right we're exploring here now while you're looking at that jeremy you have found old railroad spikes and new railroad spikes through out here correct correct we found the uh old railroad step bikes with the modern spikes which came off the 1939 railroad bridge above us so that's why you got old versus the new here in one spot and how do you know the difference uh well they're cleaner for one so that's the only other way and plus uh usually on the end of the spikes they usually have a number on them and these had eight in something sharp here oh just rock probably knowing my left yeah that's right well maybe i'll have dave come on up take a look i don't see any nails but maybe you might what i don't see any nils here but you might yeah there's right in the middle if not there and put them on the top within this area here because [Laughter] [Music] so the pacific they could tell if there was they're tired or not because they had a loved one they'd hit it oh okay and what they do is they just replaced every so often now they'd go by and say all right this is when these ties were replaced we need to replace them again now in my video that i filmed with this uh you see me i showed you i'm showing you on film a can that's nicely preserved in the wall here and i don't know where that camera now i don't see it so all right what'd you say jeremy okay so uh we just came from what could possibly be we know for one is the main car and then the one beam sticking out we might believe there might be a second card there this beam that's sticking out is part of the same freight car system that they had running here like you saw early on in the video with the original car there rigging thank you and so this dave is saying that there might be another car a third one still intact right here possibly marked by this pole this bean this rod wow right so we got two more to find that's right in your expertise um we'll call that not opinion but expertise you're saying this is called a what this is a uh portal for water drain okay well okay so culvert water collected on the other side of the rail it would come down into a one over down that side and drain through this side right so pretty much covert but you use another term you said kirby what were you that's the opening of the tunnel curbine kirby gotcha sorry i apologize i apologize all the excitement going around so uh in other words yeah this is a culvert or part of the opening or opening or the end of the culvert and they like to say they use square cover soon i wonder from where though where would they be the other side okay i'm surprised i'd be looking here and trying to see if there's something but it may have washed out well you can see how far down we are underwater or supposed to be underwater the sacramento river is just ahead of us here and the river has carved out that gully it is a barren landscape out here and the thing about it is people drop things out of their boats all the time sunglasses keys wallets watches and sometimes you find just odd metal things out and about possibly part of a houseboat last scene 2014 who knows when we'll see this again as of right now it's currently it's all time second low on record uh as of today it was 889. 42 feet surpassing 2014 uh total of 889 point 49 feet in 1976 1977 it was 230 feet below the crest of shasta dam today is 177 feet below the crest of shasta dam and shasta dam itself is 600 feet tall on one end and i believe the lake is 518 feet deep at the dam all right that's it for this adventure of california unearthed right behind me jeremy i want to say thank you very very much jeremy appreciate it so smash like button subscribe if you haven't subscribed go follow jeremy tuggle at his youtube channel and also his blog which is exploring shasta county go check him out and definitely check out his youtube stuff he's done a lot of videos out here a whole lot more than i have and uh i've gotten a lot of information from him so he's doing an amazing job out here once again thank you jeremy i just want to say that's exploring shots county history by jeremy tungle uh google blog spot that's dave junket right behind me and so shout out to shasta cascade real preservation society add them if you haven't look for them on facebook and uh stay tuned that's it guys let's go exploring what's wrong we stuck in mud the hazards of exploring shasta lake what some people do for their history [Music] all right so this is gonna be part of the blooper reels my name is leah i didn't realize it was gonna be that way you

Channel: California Unearthed

Views: 133,257

Rating: 4.8217506 out of 5

Keywords: Shasta historical society, jeremy tuggle, shasta cascade rail preservation society, shasta lake, lake shasta, shasta history, shasta county, Railroad history, train derailment, drought, Dave Youngkite

Id: jtLgwVAzo7A

Length: 38min 22sec (2302 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 12 2021